Room by Room

Kitchen

Dining Room

Linked to the kitchen through an original stone archway, the dining room features exposed oak beams, full sized fireplace with canopy, large farmhouse table with seating for eight, and the stairs up to Chambre Antoine. Below the stairs is a writing desk with laptop for guests to use, plus a wireless landline telephone.

Lounge

The lounge is comfortably appointed with quality furniture, stone benching, and provided with plenty of books and traditional games. There’s also a satellite TV, DVD, CD and iPod players, and a large collection of family DVDs. Double French doors lead out to the garden.

Chambre Clement

A cosy, quiet room looking out to the woods.

Used as either an escape from the children or, by using the ClikClak in its bed mode, becomes a compact downstairs double bedroom. Bring your paints too! Clement features pictures and drawings of Maison Boye kindly donated by previous guests.

Shower room

Large shower area, with toilet and washbasin. Conveniently located on the ground floor to provide easy showering before/after a swim, and also, because its next to Chambre Clement, can be used as this bedroom's "nearly ensuite".

Chambre Antoine

With its own staircase from the dining room, Antoine features a natural wood floor, double bed, and a hidden "walk-in" wardrobe.
Antoine's ensuite has a bespoke glass shower cabin, boutique toilet, and a designer washbasin installation, all set off with blue tinted mood lighting.

Chambre Baptiste

A large and airy bedroom with great flexibility in how it’s used.

One popular arrangement is to have two beds configured as a jumbo double bed under the flowing canopy, with the other two singles at the far end. This suits either standalone use as a double bedroom, or maybe for parents with young children who want them nearby.
Another arrangement is to have the room set out as all singles - ideal for older children to share in a fun dormitory style.
Baptiste also has a fold-up baby cot with mattress, a writing desk, and Sony Playstation with games to suit all ages.

Family Bathroom

Large bath with shower, twin washbasins and toilet. Conveniently situated between Baptiste and Delphine

Chambre Delphine

A farmhouse style room with double bed, exposed beams, and a windowed pigeonier feature characteristic of the region.

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About the area

Maison Boye is set in an idyllic location within walking distance of the bustling medieval market town of Caylus. This is in a region of outstanding natural beauty, with limestone plains, wooded valleys and dramatic gorges.

Caylus offers visitors the chance to sample this area's fabulous gastronomy - from simple breads baked in wood burning stoves and excellent local cheeses, through incredibly tasty duck and pork dishes, all the way up to bargain priced fine dining- and all accompanied by crisp white and plumy deep red wines - which you can try before you buy at the local "caves".

Caylus will give you a warm welcome - yet isn't spoilt by tourism or the overly English summer invasion that occurs in the Dordogne or Provence.

Here you will find genuinely pleasant locals who are pleased to see you, and who will patiently try to understand your best school French!

If you enjoy the simple pleasures of relaxing around the pool, country walks, and eating out in friendly restaurants - then this is the place for you!

For the more energetic, there are tennis courts within walking distance of the house, sports activities at the lake, white water canoeing a few miles away at St Antonin, horse riding and golf not far away. This is also a region where the arts feature strongly - from regular live music, often free, to crafts, museums and art galleries. The world famous Toulouse-Lautrec gallery is at Albi.

If your preference is to stay up all night, you could just sit out at Maison Boye and be fascinated by the incredibly clear view of the Milky Way thanks to the remarkably little light pollution - or you could visit one of the two nightclubs that are in easy reach.

The pictures above are of Caylus, its market square and lakeside restaurant - whilst the pictures below are of the front dining room at Renaissance (it also has street tables and a delightful rear summer terrace), the volleyball courts at the lakeside, and the 2016 Tour de France passing through.

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Booking information

The house rent is unaffected by the number of guests staying, and includes all local rates and taxes, reasonable gas, water and electricity consumption, house cleaning, agents fees, etc.

For short breaks and taking advantage of low cost flights we offer flexible arrival and departure dates along with daily pricing outside of the school summer holiday period. However, in accepting these bookings we have to consider the surrounding availability pattern, and unless filling gaps, would normally expect a minimum stay of four nights. The daily rates for short stays and filling gaps are £125 (Low season), £195 (Mid season) and £295 (High season).

To allow for the varying number of beds and towels provided, there is a £25 per person charge for laundry service (includes sheets, duvet covers, pillow cases, bathroom towels and tea cloths). Guests having extended stays may wish to order a second set of laundry to be delivered at the mid-point of their visit for an additional £25 per person. Poolside towels are not provided. There is a baby cot with mattress available, but no laundry is included. Gas used for central heating is metered and charged at £3 per hour.

We ask for a 25% booking deposit, with the balance due 8 weeks before your holiday starts. A returnable inventory deposit of £150 is added to cover lost keys (£50), serious breakages, telephone/excessive internet usage, and any central heating costs. To allow time for cleaning between lets, occupancy runs from 4pm on the day of arrival, to 10am on the day of departure.

You are obviously responsible for your own self-catering provisions, but to get you off to a good start we provide fresh soaps, toilet & kitchen rolls, bin bags, and a good helping of dishwasher and washing machine tablets etc.
To reserve a holiday simply call us at home on 01487 840761, or email your dates to paul@boye.co.uk. Then download the booking forms, fill these in, and post them back to us.

Payments and deposit refunds are usually made by online banking, but for those without this facility we are happy to accept a cheque.

On receipt of the forms and deposit (or full payment if less than 8 weeks before the holiday starts), we confirm the dates as fully booked in writing and send you our Arrivals Information pack.

The inventory deposit is refunded, less any deductions, after the keys are returned and we have received the itemised bills that cover your period of occupancy. This is usually within a couple of months of the end of your stay.
We only accept bookings from bone fide families and respectable groups - in case of doubt, references may be required.

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Reviews

Over the years, we have been pleasantly surprised by the number of visitors who have either recommended Maison Boye to their friends or come back again themselves - so we know that we must be providing a good combination of service and value.
However, we have always welcomed visitors feedback and comments - even the few criticisms, as this has enabled us to put right and improve aspects where we were not even aware of there being any problem.

So we took this a stage further, and asked everyone who stayed one year if they wouldn't mind completing a short questionnaire telling us what they thought of their whole holiday experience, from their initial booking right through to everything we provide, the house itself, the local staff, and anything else they could think of.

The suggestions we had back resulted in the water slide for the pool, additional sun shade, a bigger wooden table for the patio, and lots of small touches such as more DVDs for children, a place to hang keys, and a proper clothes line!
Plus, to keep up with events in English, we have recently added a new digital satellite system that receives UK radio, BBC HD, ITV HD and all the latest FreeSat channels such as CNN.

There is also a shareable WiFi broadband service at Boye (that reaches out to the patio area) and a place to plug in your iPod for easy listening in the lounge through the stereo. As well as ticking the boxes on the survey, some guests also wrote additional comments, and we are pleased to reproduce these here -

"Maison Boye is very comfortable for a group of adults as well as those who have small children"

"We had a really enjoyable holiday at Maison Boye ... that area of France has such a lot to offer that I am sure we will want to return"

" ... absolutely first class"

"We thoroughly enjoyed our stay ... a most relaxing holiday"

"We would like to thank you for providing everything we could have needed ... it was perfect for two families"

"We really enjoyed our stay ... Caylus was lovely"

"We had a lovely time"

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Scam Protection Information

We have never suffered from any scam at Maison Boye, nor has anyone ever been scammed in connection with Maison Boye - but we thought it best to include this guidance because of recent scare stories, and because we want all our clients to know how to make sure that their bookings are perfectly safe.

The reported incidents are where scammers pretend to be the owners of overseas villas by advertising a copy of a real villa's details. They take bookings and payments from unsuspecting holidaymakers, who then go on to arrive and find the place is already occupied by the real owner's guests. Scammers can make themselves seem credible by offering "proofs", such as utility bills, that are either fake or have been cunningly obtained by posing as a cautious holidaymaker and asking the real owner to provide them!

Fortunately, there are also some helpful articles around giving advice on how to handle this situation, so we are pleased to list below some of the recommended ways you can verify the validity of your booking.

Are you looking at a genuine advertisement?

We only promote Maison Boye on Cheznous and Holidayfrancedirect. It also appears on the Cheznous sister website Holidaybank, and late offers may occasionally be listed by us on eBay or Gumtree. If you've seen it anywhere else, then you are looking at an unauthorised or out-of-date listing. All genuine advertisements directly steer you towards our own website boye.co.uk.

Are you dealing with the real owner?

We are Paul & Claire Downham. Our email address of paul@boye.co.uk is obviously a pretty good clue, and if you ask us any question about the house, the area, or travel arrangements, etc. we will know the answer.

You can go to any WHOIS search facility to check the ownership of the boye.co.uk domain name and you will see that it is registered to us at our home address, and also that it has been registered to us for over 17 years... and that's a very good test of authenticity, because while scammers can set up believable fake domain names, they can't backdate them!

Check the phone directory too ...

Another tip is to check the phone directory to see that the villa is listed under the name you expect to find as the owner. The online French telephone directory is free to use, and like ours is called Yellow Pages (Pages Jaunes) with a white section (Pages Blanches) for residential. You can visit www.pagesjaunes.fr then click on the PagesBlanches tab, then enter "downham" as the search name under Qui (who) and "caylus" in the Ou (where) box, then click on the search button and you will see us listed at Boye.

Who are you paying?

We process all deposits and final balances into our personal bank account, with all cheques and transfers made out to us by name, and any correspondence going to our home address as above. If paying by PayPal (and it’s probably best not to) the payment should only go to paul@boye.co.uk, the same email address as above. You should NOT be paying anything to anyone else ... no agents, no intermediaries, no cash, no card payments.

Have you got a key?

Our policy is to send you a numbered and returnable front door key by post a few weeks before you are due to stay, and when this isn't possible such as in the rare case of a very late booking, we may use an on-site emergency key. Any other suggested arrangement, such as greeting you on site, or supplying a KeySafe code etc., would be wrong.

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Number of Guests

We say "from couples up to groups of ten, ideal for four to eight" - and feel this needs some explanation.

The sleeping arrangements at Boye have been designed to offer flexible accommodation, and can be readily suited to extended families or for sharing.

For example, Baptiste offers the opportunity for putting all the children together in one big room (4 singles and a cot), or maybe for a young family complete (double and 2 singles), or often just best as a very spacious double.

Delphine is a double bedded room located on the same landing as Baptiste, separated by the family bathroom. This makes Delphine particularly suitable for the parents of children in Baptiste who want to be nearby.

Antoine has its own ensuite and separate stairs, so is ideal for those requiring some privacy, such as grandparents.

Clement is useful for overnight guests, a teenager's getaway, or for those who find steep stairs difficult. This room features a ClicClak – the French alternative to sofa-beds, where the unit is a full sized double bed that folds up to make a large sofa, rather than the UK way of having a normal sofa that unfolds into an inferior bed.

However, although these combinations sleep up to ten, eleven if you include the cot, we wouldn't really recommend Maison Boye for a booking of that size.

Mixed adult/child bookings of four to eight are much more typical - where the dining and patio tables, poolside and lounge seating etc., are all going to be ample, and everyone will have plenty of space.

During the LOW season, we also regularly let to discerning couples who appreciate the value of renting a proper family house rather than the cramped and restricted properties designed for two person accommodation.

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Welcome

When you stay at Maison Boye, you have exclusive use of the whole house, grounds and pool, and you are not overlooked by anyone ... so that's total privacy and all to yourselves!

Location, Location, Location!
It took us three years of searching to find this magical combination of an idyllic rural retreat in conjunction with a bustling market town.

Maison Boye has open views of the countryside to the south, is sheltered by oak woodlands to the north, and is approached by a quiet single track lane – making it a delightfully restful place to stay … yet within a few minutes you can be shopping, banking, fine dining, or just having a night out on the town – and that makes this location very special.

Maison Boye is a traditional stone built property, set in its own grounds of over an acre, thoughtfully restored and converted to provide modern living within its original style, charm and features.
Exposed oak beams, walls a yard thick, a traditional log fireplace, quarry tile floors, rustic terracotta roof ... combined with bright modern bathrooms and kitchen, and a host of home entertainments.
A raised patio, featuring a stone barbecue, is set below an attractive bamboo pergola ... ideal for relaxed summer meals al fresco.
From here, the gently sloping sun terrace, equipped with sun loungers, sun beds and a swing seat, leads down to the private swimming pool ... and for the restless, an external WiFi repeater provides outside internet coverage too.

The swimming pool is a generous 10m x 5m with semi-circular Roman steps into the shallow end, a water slide into the deep end, and with halogen underwater lighting for the evenings.

It features automatic filtering and uses the latest environmentally friendly low chlorine water treatments.

Rather than surround the pool with unsightly fencing, we have elected to install a sophisticated alarm system to comply with the strict safety rules. This will detect a small child falling into the water, and not only sounds a siren at the poolside, but also triggers a remote wireless monitor in the house.
Maison Boye looks out to open countryside to the south, which means the garden and pool benefit from the maximum sunshine, whilst to the north it is sheltered by the attractive oak woodland typical of this Quercy region.

The secluded grounds are reached by a long tree-lined drive, with the nearest neighbours about a quarter of a mile away. However, Maison Boye is far from isolated.

The Medieval market town of Caylus, set in the River Bonnet valley, with all its shops, bars and restaurants is reached within a few minutes by car or, more pleasantly, by a stroll down the quiet country lane ... where you could meet a friendly donkey along the way who loves to be fed some grass, or maybe the cows en-route to milking, or even a baby lizard basking in the sunshine.

Getting to Caylus has also become much easier recently. There is now a wide choice of low cost flights to the area (aim for Toulouse, Rodez, Brive or Carcassonne) - and for those who prefer to drive, the completion of the new French motorways to within ten miles of the house has made the journey from Calais a more relaxing and quicker trip.

La france profonde:
Maison Boye is a very old building set in a relaxed rural location, so whilst having immense rustic charm and character, it doesn't provide the clinical conditions of a modern identikit hotel. The thick stone walls are home to nature, so expect to see some insects, be fascinated by the lizards, maybe a mouse in the house, a wild boar in the woods, and cows in the fields. There are exposed oak beams you can walk into, floors at differing levels between rooms, a wobbly roof, and the possibility of water leaks and power cuts during thunderstorms. The grounds are a French idyll, not an English rose garden - expect wild flowers, mole hills, natural borders, outcrops of rock and lots of space and fresh air. Maison Boye is a lovely place to stay, a wonderful retreat for walks, rest and the easy going pace of backwater France ... but this country style is not for everyone ...city folk may find the total dark of night and lack of background traffic noise unsettling, obsessive-compulsive cleaners will lose the fight against cobwebs, and hyper active families will have to force themselves to relax and unwind.

Maison Boye - This wonderful villa in idyllic SW France is available for private letting

OPEN FOR 2018 ... we have just opened the diary for 2018.First come, First served!

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HALF PRICE ! Get two weeks for the price of one. 3rd/17th Oct 2017.

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HALF TERM ...the same price as any other low season week, AND option to extend at just £95 per night.

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FIREWORKS ... a fantastic free local firework display is held every year by the lake on Bastille Day 14th July.

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WE SELL OUT of all available dates every year, so book early to secure your stay!